I Want to be Forgiven
by StealthLiberal
Summary: Peter and Derek want the one thing almost nobody will give them. Forgiveness.
1. Chapter 1

**LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This is a work of speculative amateur fiction. The characters and settings of the MTV television show 'Teen Wolf' belong to MTV et al. No profit was made, nor ever intended to be made.**

**I Want to be Forgiven**

**(Peter and Derek: twoshot)**

**AN: **Another Teen Wolf fic that is dedicated to Ookamihybrid. I refuse to watch the show until this 2 shot and one more oneshot is done. I don't want the source material to kill the image in my head quite yet.

**XXX XXX XXX XXX**

"_DADDY! DADDY! DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY!"_

It's not long before Peter wakes up, screaming... just like Annie had died. Everyone wants to know why he can't sleep, why he can't be nicer, just go along to get along? Yeah well... not everyone dreams of their child dying night after night after goddamn night. People think he is evil, his pack thinks he is evil. They haven't lived what he has lived through.

He spends his time planning, watching, making moves no one understands. Telling lies that no one can grasp are necessary. His pack, his nephew, no one truly understands him and maybe, that's a good thing. Peter decides it's a good thing, because if they could understand, that would mean they lost their child and that's something Peter wouldn't wish on anybody. Even Kate-Fucking-Argent, dead though she may now be.

And now he's a zombie, or a wolf, or is it a zombie-wolf? He's not really sure and he tries hard not to think about it. But... sometimes... he wonders. Was it really the best thing, the right thing, for him, to come back? He keeps looking for reasons why it would be... but it's getting harder and harder to find them. Maybe he came back because he was so used to beating the odds, of existing, that he hasn't figured out how not to. It's just, with no revenge remaining to take, what is there left for him to do, to be anymore?

No easy answers await him in his bed, wrapped in sweat soaked sheets as he shakes from the latest nightmare.

**XXX XXX XXX XXX**

He spends his day antagonizing Derek, well, because he can. His nephew makes it far too easy and Peter likes to twist the knife. He knows Derek didn't mean to get everyone killed, didn't mean for the sick game Kate played on him to end the way it did... but regrets and intentions won't bring his daughter back from her grave. So Peter prefers to torture Derek by reminding him of the dead.

He is still self aware enough to realize that Derek has been punished enough, that he was just a kid, that it wasn't his fault, it was Kate's. But if he stops rubbing Derek's nose in it, what will he have left? It's the only way he has anymore to honor his dead. Derek keeps the Hale house the burnt out wreck it is, and Peter has the joy of tormenting his nephew. He's also self aware enough to realize that between the two of them they could put a therapist's kids through Harvard.

When the pack comes with some drinks and laughs because it's Friday night, he calls them the Twilight Bark. Once again, because he can. He knows they fear and mistrust him, he can't even blame them. Peter can't stop twisting that knife, and not just on them, not just on Derek, he twists on himself.

What kind of father doesn't save their four year old daughter as she screams... as she burns?

**XXX XXX XXX XXX**

It's Lydia, off all people who finally asks. Even Peter, with his never ending sarcasm, and cutting wit is at a loss to explain why.

As the pack drinks she walks over to him and openly gives him a beer. Then she sits across from him on the steps of his family home. Not that her boyfriend likes that very much. Jackson would love to be able to rip him to shreds for the hell he put Lydia through, but he knows he doesn't have the juice yet to even try and pull that off. So instead he growls and hovers near Lydia... waiting for a move Peter isn't going to make.

"Why?" Lydia asks.

"Excuse me?" he says. Not sure, exactly, what she really wants to know.

"All of it. Lauren's murder, your schemes, your plotting, what you did to me. Everything... just.. why?"

Peter just makes a non-committal noise, looks into middle distance over her head and drinks the beer she has given him.

Lydia is not impressed, to say the least. "You owe me that much Peter Hale. You nearly drove me insane. So you owe me, and this is how you pay me back. You tell me, you tell US... why."

At first he has no idea where to start. But then, like the bards throughout time have always said: "The truth will out"

His voice sounds heavier than normal, like he's reaching down into himself, examining motives for the very first time.

"Lauren and Derek weren't there the night of the fire. Not their fault, and I never said I wished them dead for it. It was just luck on their parts. But I was... and so was Annie. I had been married, it was brief, and while it lasted it was good. Helena was a good wife and a good mother and she was human and eventually keeping these secrets was too much for her and she started drinking. We ended up divorced and she was so drunk so often she lost custody of Annie to me. She took off and I haven't heard from her again. While she lasted, before she was drinking though.. it had been good."

Peter's seems very far away now, revisiting memories so old that they're ghosts.

"Annie was going to be a wolf, I could tell. I kept her close... so she was with me that night. When the fire started, she was on the other side of the house. You don't understand how fast the flames ate up the house, the chaos inside. It was horrible. They killed wolf and human alike. Adult and child.. everyone. It didn't matter to Kate Argent, anyone who was a Hale or related to us, was guilty. And to her we all deserved to die. Even a four year old girl who begged for a kitten and still wanted her father to read her a bedtime story every night."

The whole pack can hear his grief, can smell his sadness. Can taste his regret. Derek never told them... they didn't know about Annie. And knowing this was making them see Peter Hale in an entirely new light.

"I tried to get to her, I swear to G-d I tried! But I couldn't see and the flames confused my wolf. Instinct was telling me to run and instinct was screaming at me to find Annie. When the roof caved in, she got trapped. I could hear her screaming... I could... I..."

He stops, covers his eyes, trying to compose himself. Trying to throttle back the crushing weight that wants to spill out all over him right now. How can you ever explain what this feels like? They're just kids. How can they ever understand?

"She died screaming for me and I dream about it every night. And every night all I can think of is that Kate Argent is dead and burning in hell and that is the best I can do for Annie, and everyone else. When I woke up, all I could think about was how Lauren and Derek must have made her pay. How Kate must have died at their hands, how they would have gotten revenge for our family. For my Annie.. But they didn't."

"You have no idea how angry, how filled with rage I was at Lauren. She was the alpha, she HAD A responsibility! And she shirked it. She had been lucky enough to not be there, why? Why HER and not Annie?! Especially if she was going to just be the alpha who let Kate Argent get away with killing our whole family. With killing my CHILD!'

"So I killed her. It had to be done. And then the rest was all service to my revenge on them for what they did. I can never get my daughter back, but I could kill them. And you know what? It felt good., it felt real good. Because you don't get over having your child burn to death, you get through it and it means something new everyday. And sometimes you don't survive it, not really."

Lydia nods, composes herself and meets his eyes. "So why did you want to come back so badly then? Death should have been a blessing for you."

Peter is honest for the first time since he woke from his coma. "I don't know. I'm here because I don't know how not to be I guess."

Lydia nods one last time and puts her hand on his shoulder. "I'm glad you told me. I think I can understand now."

And with that, she walks back inside and the entire pack save for Derek follows her. Instead, Derek crouches before Peter.

"What do you want most Peter?" he asks. Because Derek has as much guilt and as much blood on his hands as Peter ever had, so he gets it. He's given up thinking that either one of them has the moral high ground anymore. Too many sins, on both sides, for that.

His uncle is silent for a while and then he turns lost eyes on his nephew. "Put me back Derek. It was a mistake to come back. Put me back with my family. With my Annie. I can't... please... just put me back."

Derek whispers something to Peter as he cups the other man's jaw. Then he yanks to the side and upwards, cleanly breaking his neck, and killing him.

Boyd and Scott help him bury the body... and Deaton explains a little bit more for the benefit of the pack.

"Peter was the kind of guy who was born to be a father. He loved Annie with everything in him, she was his whole life. You don't make it through that kind of pain intact. For a guy like Peter, to have his daughter die the way she did... he died in that fire. He died with her. His body just didn't get the memo."

As they walk away from the newly built grave, Lydia turns to Derek. "I saw you, I saw you break his neck, you said something to him. What did you say."

Derek stares straight ahead. "I forgave him."


	2. Chapter 2

**LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Teen Wolf belongs to MTV, all rights and to the show and it's characters also belong to MTV. This is a work of speculative, amateur fiction. No profit was made, nor intended to be made.**

**AN: **To those who commented on the lack of a happy ending for Peter in the previous chapter, I wanted to clarify what I had written. For Peter, dying and being with his daughter IS his happy ending. As a father, he can't find happiness having buried Annie. It just takes him a little bit to figure that out. It may be sad, but for the Peter in my head, he is very happy where he ended up.

Now on with the second half of this 2-shot!

**Chapter Two: Derek**

In the weeks following Peter's death, Derek has a lot to think about. He is alone, the very last Hale left alive. He wonders if Kate is happy about that, wherever she is. He wonders if Peter is finally with Annie and content. And he wonders about Laura, wonders if his sister is proud or disappointed in his leadership of the pack.

He also wonders if it can really be called the Hale pack anymore. If he's the only Hale, maybe it's just the Beacon Hills pack now? When you've seen so much death, these are the thoughts that take up your time. With Kate dead, the kanima dealt with, Jackson finally shifting and an uneasy truce with what's left of the Argents... what is there to do, but ruminate on what once was?

Derek starts with memories of Kate. By the time she had died, they were squarely enemies and there was no longer any love left. Once, however, there had been. Derek may have been young, but he's old enough now to know that she had been his first love. His feelings for Kate had been real, and he's pretty sure, that underneath the twisted sociopathy... Kate had had feelings for him too. Maybe that's why she felt she had to burn his family alive? Maybe loving a werewolf had been what had finally sent her over the edge straight into crazy. Maybe setting that fire had been her way of burning out of her what she thought should never be: a hunter with a werewolf. He's never going to truly know, because by the time they had reconnected, she was fully psychotic, and where there had been love, he had only brokenness and hatred to throw at her.

He's also old enough now to know that from the very beginning, his relationship with her was wrong. Not because she was hunter, she may have believed that, but he doesn't. Not anymore. No what was wrong was that he was a 16 year old kid and she had been a young woman in her 20's. Back then he hadn't been mature and experienced enough to know that there was a reason relationships like that were looked down on and mostly illegal. He had been too young to know better, but Kate had been old enough to know that she was crossing a line. She just hadn't cared. And as everything had spiraled out of control, he hadn't been able to stop any of it.

It's why, even though he's surrounded by a pack of rather attractive and sometimes alluring people, he will never cross that line with them. He's now the young man in his twenties, and every last one of them, wolf or human, is the teenager he used to be. Derek learned his lesson years ago, and he's not looking to repeat it from a different angle.

**XXX XXX XXX XXX**

When he feels the full moon coming he finds himself prowling around Laura's grave often. Something about this place compels him to keep coming back. Late at night he sits there with a bottle of vodka and pours a bit over where she lays.

"Libations for the dead, I guess."

Derek sits there and can't quite figure out what it is that he wants anymore. Peter is dead and at his hands. It doesn't matter that it's what his uncle wanted... it's just another death that no one would understand about. It's easy to point fingers when this disaster isn't your life.

He's pretty sure that Laura would have done a better job of all this than he has done. He's so lost sometimes it's like Deaton has to hold his hand. At the end of the day, Derek is just existing, trying to find meaning in it all and not succeeding very well. He has no idea where to go to from here. There's no immediate goal, no immediate enemy to face for the moment. Just his memories and increasing sense of guilt and failure. Perhaps the the greatest enemy after all, is the enemy within?

He chuckles a bit at that. How very philosophical of him. His sister would be amused. Jesus, he wants her back. If he could get anyone or anything back from all of this.. it would be Laura. Derek wasn't ready to lead when she was killed, and it's been trial by fire ever since. For every step forward, there's been a step back. For every success, a failure. He's not sure he can keep doing this anymore. He wants to leave, to run someplace easier than Beacon Hills and all it's memories, but he made this pack and he can't abandon them. Besides, his sister might just raise from the dead to teach him a lesson if he did.

So instead he sits at her grave murmuring to her ghost and wanting the one thing he can't have. The one thing there is no one left to give. No one who really remembers.

"I want to be forgiven." Derek murmurs to Laura.

He hears Stile's jeep and Jackson's car coming towards the house. The pack is gathering, finding comfort and safety in numbers. He gets up and brushes the dirt off his jeans. There is no one left to forgive him for his sins as he forgave Peter... instead there is life, demanding that he live it. A pack demanding that he lead it. For now... that will have to be enough.


End file.
